9/11's Miracle Survivor Sheds Bandages; A 1907 Landmark Will Be Restored for Residential Use

By GLENN COLLINS

Published: March 5, 2004

Veiled in its 23-story shroud and braced in scaffolding for more than two years, the cherished little skyscraper at 90 West Street has been a building in mourning. To those living and working near ground zero, it has been a grimly persistent reminder of the terrorist assault on the World Trade Center.

Now the cloak is gone. The scaffolding is down. And while the horrific wounds on its northern facade are finally -- and shockingly -- visible, Joachim Fiebich, a construction supervisor at the site, said that ''it is as if 90 West has come back to life.''

''And everyone on the street,'' he said, ''wants to know what we're doing.''

Mr. Fiebich, a manager for the Seaboard Weatherproofing Company, is helping direct the vanguard of workers setting to right this 1907 landmark, a jauntily colored neo-Gothic office building created by the architect Cass Gilbert. Its exterior is being restored and its interior is being rebuilt as apartments.

In the days after the twin towers collapsed, 90 West Street was celebrated as a miracle building of Sept. 11, because, unlike so many others nearby, it survived. But the building was severely damaged when flaming steel debris rained on its north facade and gouged the exterior.

Out-of-control fires raged in the building for days, gutting five floors and major portions of four others. A plummeting javelin of steel demolished the kitchen at the Morton's of Chicago steakhouse on the ground floor of the building, at the corner of Albany and West Streets, which once had the highest revenues of any of the chain's restaurants.

The battered copper sheets of the sloping mansard roof -- pierced, pitted and dented by hurtling projectile debris -- were peeled back as if by a giant with a can opener. On the rooftop, the decorative copper balustrade was melted and twisted .

An executive secretary died in the building when she was trapped in an elevator there after the attack, and another office worker is believed to have perished with her. Recovery crews searching the roof, scaffolding and gutter pipes discovered large sections of one of the hijacked airplanes, and fragments of remains believed to have been those of people in the planes and the towers.

Given the destruction and the level of environmental contamination, most of the interior, which did not have landmark status, had to be gutted. This was done behind a ground-to-roof covering of reinforced Monarflex plastic sheeting on the north facade.

In December, this shroud was torn open in a northeaster. It sagged, then began catching the wind like a menacing sail and had to be removed. Last month, the scaffolding that had obscured so much damage was finally taken down.

A painstaking restoration has since begun. ''It is a demanding job because there have been so many unknowns on the site,'' said Mr. Fiebich. ''There are so many mysteries as we repair and replace.''

Peter Levenson, a principal of the Kibel Companies and one of the building's owners, said that the complexity of the reconstruction required ''perfect coordination,'' pointing to the teams of workers completing the interior design while others work to restore the exterior.

Engineering assessments suggest that the vintage terra cotta fireproofing materials that protected the steel structure of 90 West Street -- including four-inch-thick blocks of tile around the columns and foot-thick layers of tile between the building's floors -- limited the spread of fire. Only a few structural columns on the upper floors buckled in the heat.

And the Gothic facade of 90 West Street endured because of its terra cotta construction totaling more than a foot in thickness; the building's base of decorative granite blocks is, in some places, an extraordinary six feet thick.

Gilbert's skyscraper was originally conceived as a high-profile advertisement for business enterprise, and the building's main tenant was the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company.

Representing significant advances in early skyscraper design, 90 West Street was a prelude to Gilbert's 1913 Woolworth Building at 233 Broadway. Margaret Heilbrun, who curated a 2000 Gilbert show at the New-York Historical Society and edited ''Inventing the Skyline: the Architecture of Cass Gilbert,'' said that the building represents ''the epitome of Gilbert's skills.'' Not the least of his triumphs, she said, was the engineering artistry that situated the building atop deep pilings at its waterlogged site.

''Thank God it survived in the era when other Gilbert buildings were demolished,'' Ms. Heilbrun said. It won contemporary attention in the mid-1980's, when its richly encrusted upper-floor colonnades and dramatic 45-foot mansard roof were lighted at night. Its exterior became a city landmark in 1998.

Early last year Brack Capital Real Estate, which owns properties like 95 Morton Street and 150 East 85th Street in Manhattan, paid $12.25 million to buy 90 West Street.

The sum was considered by brokers at the time to be a top price for such a wounded building. But Mr. Levenson, who is spearheading the reconstruction, explained that unlike other buildings in Lower Manhattan, ''it was uniquely configured for a residential conversion,'' because it has relatively small floor plates, 10- to-17-foot ceilings, abundant windows and great views.

When finished, 90 West Street -- which had been a 360,000-square-foot office building -- will become a high-end rental building, with 410 apartments ranging from studios to three-bedroom units. Just how high is high end? ''We'll see what the market is like when we open the door,'' said another of the owners, Moshe-Dan Azogui, who heads the United States branch of Brack Capital Real Estate.

Last month the developers were granted $106.5 million in tax-exempt Liberty Bonds to finance the $145 million project; the rest will come from Brack Capital, the Kibel Companies (which has built high-rise projects in Manhattan and the Riverdale section of the Bronx, and converted properties like 85 John Street) and a third partner, the hoteliers Richard Born and Ira Drukier, whose properties include the Mercer in SoHo and the Maritime in Chelsea.

When the new owners stripped away a fire-scorched lobby renovation, decades old, they discovered what was left of the original lobby, the northern end of which had disappeared into the trade center void.

Working from historic photographs, the owners will reconstruct a classic-looking new lobby incorporating many of the surviving original elements, including the 1907 decorative lobby frieze, its cast-iron embellishments, and plaster remnants that include the claws of decorative eagles, now missing.

If but a small band of workers is toiling now, more than 200 will soon occupy the site. ''It's a privilege and an honor to be here, because we feel part of history,'' said Louis Conca, a 40-year-old construction worker who once was employed in the World Trade Center.

If the developers anticipate considerable rewards, there are also undeniable risks. Mr. Levenson said that one is certainly ''that we'll be open down there before everything else.'' But he knows that ''many people have a commitment to be downtown.''

Will prospective tenants be worried about future construction near ground zero? ''The walls of 90 West are very thick, the windows will be new, and the park next to it will separate our tenants from the construction,'' Mr. Azogui said. ''Anyway, it's hard to find anywhere in this city that isn't under construction.''

Photos: Just south of ground zero, the office building at 90 West Street was gouged and set on fire during the 9/11 attack. The north facade, below left, had the worst damage. (Photo by Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)(pg. B1); The view from a window at 90 West Street, overlooking a section of the building's damaged mansard roof and, beyond that, ground zero. (Photo by Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)(pg. B4)